Christian Clarity Review

excerpted from:
FT April 2006: Articles

What quarrel, then, does Hochschild have with Wheaton, if he has one at all? There is indeed a key point of dispute. Wheaton’s president, Duane Litfin, contends that Catholics who believe they can faithfully sign Wheaton’s Statement of Faith—especially the clause about Scripture—are mistaken, either about what Wheaton’s statement means or about what the Catholic Church teaches. Hochschild disagrees, contending that Catholics do indeed affirm that the Holy Scriptures are “of supreme and final authority in all they say,” and that the statements on the Bible in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the documents on which it is based (notably Dei Verbum from the Second Vatican Council) clearly support his contention.

President Litfin counters that, when the Statement of Faith is read in its proper context—which includes a preamble that identifies Wheaton “not only with the Scriptures but also with the reformers and the evangelical movement of recent years”—it becomes clear that the statement about Scripture is intended to imply clear dissent from the Catholic position that Scripture is co-equal with Holy Tradition, and that Scripture and Tradition form an indissoluble whole that is authoritatively interpreted by the Roman magisterium and by the magisterium alone. In other words, a reasonably careful and informed reader of the statement will discern that the phrase “supreme and final authority” is meant to invoke the central Reformational commitment to sola scriptura.
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Moreover, as James Tunstead Burtchaell has shown in his book The Dying of the Light—a book well known to the leadership of Wheaton College—dozens and dozens of American colleges and universities have discovered that there seems to be no “undo” button for schools that broaden their religious self-understanding. What happened at Harvard, and then happened at Oberlin, is now being completed at Davidson: The history of American higher education indicates that such sequences of events run one way only. So any school that has a distinctively Christian character and wishes to retain it had better take great care before “opening up” the institution to the previously excluded.

Yet if Wheaton were to accept Catholics on its faculty, this would not be a “broadening” of the kind that Burtchaell describes so compellingly. By such an action not a single provision of any orthodox Christian creed would be compromised; not a single concession to theological liberalism would be made. Such a move would not signal that Wheaton takes its core theological commitments any less seriously. Rather, it would reflect an acceptance of the fact that Catholics and Protestants have a far better understanding of each other, and a deeper recognition of their great common cause, than has been the case since the earliest days of the Reformation. (My colleague Mark Noll and his coauthor Caroline Nystrom have explored this reconciliation with great skill in their book Is the Reformation Over?)

Not by any means defending Wheaton as some sort of archtypical, genuinely Christian school: they are all free willers. The only difference between them is that most of the Protestants have not been born again –of all of them, to include ’scholars’ and ‘pastors’ etc. — and yet when the unconditionally elect among them are in truth regenerated (by nothing that is within pop/evangelical ‘Reformed’ Christianity and only because they live in a larger world than what is within the confines of modern pop Christianity) they arrive unencumbered by an extra load of lies they must be cleansed of that is Romanism.

The unconditionally elect among the Romanists will be born again as well, just as the unconditionally elect of Islam, Hinduism or Judaism or pop ‘Reformed’ Christianity–but by nothing within Roman Catholicism and only because they live in a larger world than the confines of the Roman demon. They have all fallen in the ditch of the lie of free will and non-creating speech of sin/anti-Christ, both Protestants and Romanists, and yet the Roman version of the lie of free will is filled with a thousand times more vain ceremony, lies and false oaths than the Protestant version. Both versions are essentially worship of what the ancients called variously Diana of the Ephesians, Astarte, and Artemis (and the Romanists/Eastern Orthodox/Episcopals and Lutherans falsely call Mary, the mother of Jesus ) as an etiquette of emotion that IS supposedly Jesus Christ as merely an ‘ideal’ human heart with no need for any regeneration at all or change of speech at all.

There is no genuine new birth in either version of the lie of free will as both are of non-creating speech of sin/anti-Christ from either; niether one has ever known genuine new creation or the real Jesus Christ. When they the unconditionally elect among both of them are indeed born again, the genuine babes in Jesus Christ are thrown out and depised by their former comrades in false religion and worship of anti-Christ. Thus, when the ‘two camps’ fight they are always confused over why exactly they are fighting and the definition boils down to creeds of non-creating speech and interpretations filtered through human emotion by both as anti-Christ.

One is for what it sees as God, but is nothing more than its own version of Mom, Pop and Tradition. The other’s is merely ‘Back at you!’ Both worship each thier particular brand name of what both essentially see/feel as the Etiquette that Fell From Heaven. Each is perfectly deceived its own conscience is more than a very strict adherence to the etiquette of Astarte/Artemis/human-emotional-common-sense and yet neither can escape that very Etiquette as the definer of when, where, under what circumstance and ‘how’ (caught as they are within the lie of free will within non-creating speech/anti-Christ) to feel per situation/event as each is deceived that life itself now and the ‘earning’ of heaven later (minus any real regeneration in Jesus Christ) is nothing more than ‘emotional intelligence’ that the ‘free’ will uses to gain more freedom for itself as eternity. And each must state a lie as to why the other’s speech/doctrine is a lie and supposedly ‘not doing the Etiquette’ properly as to be honest takes the Holy Spirit non-metaphorically living in you as the only Honesty and God as The Only Honesty/Word necessarily exposes each to have been a liar in the past.

But now anti-Christ through the Romanists cries foul when their lies are held up to be the lies they are. There is no ’sacred tradition’. Christ Himself condemns such a thing as ’sacred tradition’ verbatum as spirit and life:

Mark 7:5-23 then the Pharisees and the scribes ask him, Why do thy disciples not walk according to what has been delivered by the ancients, but eat the bread with defiled hands? But he answering said to them, Well did Esaias prophesy concerning you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honour me with their lips, but their heart is far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as their teachings commandments of men. For , leaving the commandment of God, ye hold what is delivered by men to keep –washings of vessels and cups, and many other such like things ye do. And he said to them, Well do ye set aside the commandment of God, that ye may observe what is delivered by yourselves to keep . For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, he who speaks ill of father or mother, let him surely die. But *ye* say, If a man say to his father or his mother, It is corban (that is, gift), whatsoever thou mightest have profit from me by… And ye no longer suffer him to do anything for his father or his mother; making void the word of God by your traditional teaching which ye have delivered; and many such like things ye do. And having called again the crowd, he said to them, Hear me, all of you , and understand: There is nothing from outside a man entering into him which can defile him; but the things which go out from him, those it is which defile the man. If any one have ears to hear, let him hear. And when he went indoors from the crowd, his disciples asked him concerning the parable. And he says to them, Are *ye* also thus unintelligent? Do ye not perceive that all that is outside entering into the man cannot defile him, because it does not enter into his heart but into his belly, and goes out into the draught, purging all meats? And he said, That which goes forth out of the man, that defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, go forth evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickednesses, deceit, licentiousness, a wicked eye, injurious language, haughtiness, folly; all these wicked things go forth from within and defile the man.

Yet the Romanists say that their traditional teachings, that came and come from their own hearts are not-wicked but eqaul to and greater than God as Word. And that is the unforgivable sin: to equate God as Word and Spirit with the speech of men as if the non-creating speech of men were the only speech in total reality and as if God as Jesus Christ/Word/Creating Speech does not exist. So they have always done, killing the prophets for that very thing: God Spoke through the prophets and the ‘religious leaders’ loathed both the Word the prophets Spoke and the witness of the prophets themselves.

The Protestants are committing the unforgivable sin as anti-Christ through them cries night and day that ‘human reason’ trumps everything and that God must be understood –at all– through the lens of the non-creating speech of sin/anti-Christ even as anti-Christ though them tries to hide their arrogance in the cavil of “I’m just a fallen man (as are all) and can only have a ‘view’ –but my ‘view’ is the lens God has to ‘use’ to let me know anything. Otherwise, my ‘free’ will is violated”. The Romanists/Eastern Orthodox/Lutherans/Episcopals are doing the same and yet anti-Christ through them says that what they say IS the Word of God as ’sacred tradition’ –that their ‘view’ IS God –that their supposed ‘free’ will IS God.

Wheaton is blessed at least not to get any worse than it already is by mixing it’s impurity with more impurity of the Romanists.

God spoke to those in His Own day exactly what He says to modern day instruments of anti-Christ who anti-Christ cloaks as “religious conservatives”, arguing among themselves over who was ‘more pious’ than whom by the adherence to/’doing’ of a certain Etiquette they claimed Fell from Heaven as the de facto definition of being a ‘real’ worshipper of Jehovah:

John 8:42-59 Jesus said to them, If God were your father ye would have loved me, for I came forth from God and am come from him ; for neither am I come of myself, but *he* has sent me. Why do ye not know my speech? Because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of the devil, as your father, and ye desire to do the lusts of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has not stood in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks falsehood, he speaks of what is his own; for he is a liar and its father: and because I speak the truth, ye do not believe me. Which of you convinces me of sin? If I speak truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God hears the words of God: therefore ye hear them not, because ye are not of God. The Jews answered and said to him, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan and hast a demon? Jesus answered, I have not a demon; but I honour my Father, and ye dishonour me. But I do not seek my own glory: there is he that seeks and judges. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If any one shall keep my word, he shall never see death. The Jews therefore said to him, Now we know that thou hast a demon. Abraham has died, and the prophets, and thou sayest, If any one keep my word, he shall never taste death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, who has died? and the prophets have died: whom makest thou thyself? Jesus answered, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing: it is my Father who glorifies me, of whom ye say, He is our God. And ye know him not; but I know him; and if I said, I know him not, I should be like you, a liar. But I know him, and I keep his word. Your father Abraham exulted in that he should see my day, and he saw and rejoiced. The Jews therefore said to him, Thou hast not yet fifty years, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said to them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am. They took up therefore stones that they might cast them at him; but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and thus passed on.

Homosexuality, sexual perverisons of all types, adultry, divorce, women pastors and priest, abortion, the right hand of fellowship to false religions that overtly deny the Name of Jesus Christ are rampant among all of them. And yet they argue to persuade the audience they are the ‘true’ proponents and defenders of the Etiquette they Fear as if she were Jehovah.

Matthew 11:16-19 But to whom shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the markets, which, calling to their companions, say, We have piped to you, and ye have not danced: we have mourned to you, and ye have not wailed. For John has come neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He has a demon. The Son of man has come eating and drinking, and they say, Behold, a man that is eating and wine-drinking, a friend of tax-gatherers, and of sinners: –and wisdom has been justified by her children.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen